Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938) was one of the most important
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
-
AmericanThe Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...
poets of the
postmodernismPostmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives...
movement.
Alfonsina was born in
Sala CapriascaSala Capriasca is a village and former municipality in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland.In 2001 the municipality was merged with the other, neighboring municipalities Cagiallo, Lopagno, Roveredo, Tesserete and Vaglio to form a new and larger municipality Capriasca....
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
to an
ArgentineArgentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...
beer industrialist living in Switzerland for a few years. There, Alfonsina learned to speak
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
. Following the failure of the family business, they opened a tavern in the city of
RosarioRosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located 300 km northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....
, Argentina, where Alfonsina worked at a variety of chores.
In 1907, she joined a traveling theatre company which took her around the country.
Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938) was one of the most important
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
-
AmericanThe Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...
poets of the
postmodernismPostmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives...
movement.
Life
Alfonsina was born in
Sala CapriascaSala Capriasca is a village and former municipality in the canton of Ticino, Switzerland.In 2001 the municipality was merged with the other, neighboring municipalities Cagiallo, Lopagno, Roveredo, Tesserete and Vaglio to form a new and larger municipality Capriasca....
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
to an
ArgentineArgentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...
beer industrialist living in Switzerland for a few years. There, Alfonsina learned to speak
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
. Following the failure of the family business, they opened a tavern in the city of
RosarioRosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located 300 km northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....
, Argentina, where Alfonsina worked at a variety of chores.
In 1907, she joined a traveling theatre company which took her around the country. With them she performed in
Henrik IbsenHenrik Johan Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as the "father of modern drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when Victorian values of family...
's
Spectres, Benito Pérez GaldósBenito Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realist novelist. Considered second only to Cervantes in stature, he was the leading Spanish realist novelist....
's
La loca de la casa, and Florencio Sánchez's
Los muertos.
Back in Rosario she finished her studies as a rural primary teacher, and also started working for
Mundo Rosarino and
Monos y Monadas local magazines, as well as
Mundo Argentino.
In 1911 she moved to
Buenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital, and largest city, of Argentina, currently the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the eastern shore of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, seeking the anonymity of a big city. The following year her son Alejandro was born, the illegitimate child of a journalist in
CorondaCoronda is a small city in the . It is located in the San Jerónimo Department, 43 km south from the provincial capital . It has a population of about 17,000 inhabitants ....
.
In spite of her economic difficulties, she published
La inquietud del rosal in 1916, and later started writing for
Caras y Caretas magazine while working as a cashier in a shop.
Alfonsina soon became acquainted with other writers such as
José Enrique RodóJosé Enrique Rodó was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert back to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture....
and
Amado NervoAmado Nervo was a Mexican poet. His poetry was known for its use of metaphor and reference to mysticism....
, and established friendships with
José IngenierosJosé Ingenieros , was an Argentine physician, positivist philosopher and essayist...
and
Manuel UgarteManuel Ugarte was an Argentine author, writer and member of the Socialist Party.Manuel Baldomero Ugarte was born in San José de Flores, now part of the City of Buenos Aires, on 27 February 1875. His father was Floro Ugarte and his mother Sabina Rivero...
.
Her economic situation improved, which allowed her to travel to
MontevideoMontevideo is the largest city, the capital and chief port of Uruguay. Montevideo is the only city in the country with a population over 1,000,000...
,
UruguayUruguay , is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.1 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area. An estimated 88–94% of the population are of mostly European and/or mixed descent.Uruguay's only land border is...
. There she met the poet
Juana de IbarbourouJuana de Ibarbourou, also known as Juana de América, was a Uruguayan poet of Galician origin. She was one of the most popular poets of Spanish America...
, as well as
Horacio QuirogaHoracio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza was an Uruguayan author and writer. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the influence of modernismo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Rudyard Kipling, among others...
, with whom she would become great friends. Her 1920 book
Languidez received the first Municipal Poetry Prize and the second National Literature Prize.
She taught literature at the
Escuela Normal de Lenguas Vivas, and she published
Ocre. Her style now showed more realism than before, and a strongly
feministThe term Feminism can be used to describe an academic discourse, or to describe a political, cultural or economic movement aimed at establishing more rights and legal protection for women...
theme. Solitude and marginality began to affect her health, and worsening emotional problems forced her to leave her job as teacher.
Trips to Europe changed her writing by helping her to lose her former models, and reach a more dramatic lyricism, loaded with an erotic vehemence unknown in those days, and new feminist thoughts in
Mundo de siete pozos (1934) and
Mascarilla y trébol (1938).
A year and a half after her friend Quiroga committed suicide in 1937, and haunted by solitude and breast cancer, Storni sent her last poem,
Voy a dormir ("I'm going to sleep") to
La NaciónLa Nación is an Argentine daily newspaper. The country's leading conservative paper, the centrist Clarín is its main competitor. It is the only newspaper in Argentina still published in broadsheet format....
newspaper in October of 1938.
Around 1:00 AM on Tuesday the 25th, Alfonsina left her room and headed towards the sea at
La Perla beach in
Mar del PlataMar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean in the Buenos Aires Province, south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is one of the major fishing ports and the biggest seaside beach resort in Argentina....
,
ArgentinaArgentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico,...
. Later that morning two workers found her body washed up on the beach. Although her biographers hold that she jumped into the water from a
breakwaterBreakwaters are structures constructed on coasts as part of coastal defence or to protect an anchorage from the effects of weather and longshore drift.-Purposes of breakwaters:...
, popular legend is that she slowly walked out to sea until she drowned.
Her death inspired
Ariel RamírezAriel Ramírez , is an Argentine composer, pianist and music director.-Development and influences:Ariel Ramírez was born in Santa Fe, Argentina. He began his piano studies in Santa Fe, and soon became fascinated with the music of the gauchos and creoles in the mountains...
and
Félix LunaFélix Luna is a prominent Argentine writer, lyricist and historian.-Life and times:Luna was born in Buenos Aires to a familiy originally from La Rioja Province, in 1925...
to compose the song
Alfonsina y el Mar ("Alfonsina and the sea"), which has been performed by
Mercedes SosaHaydée Mercedes Sosa, known as La Negra, was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout Latin America and internationally. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by both Brazilians and Cubans...
,
Tania LibertadTania Libertad de Souza Zuniga, known as Tania Libertad, is a singer who was born in Peru on October 24, 1952 and has lived in Mexico since 1978....
,
Nana MouskouriNana Mouskouri , born as Ioanna Mouskouri on October 13, 1934, in Chania, Crete, Greece, is a singer who is confirmed to have sold over 200 million records worldwide in a career spanning over five decades, making her one of the world's best-selling female recording artists of all time. She was...
,
MocedadesMocedades is a Spanish Basque singing group, probably best known for representing Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1973 with the song Eres Tú.-Group formation:...
,
Andrés CalamaroAndrés Calamaro is an Argentine musician and composer. His former band Los Rodríguez was a major success in Spain in the 1990s...
and many others.
Also, fifty years after her death, she inspired the Latin American artist Aquino to incorporate her image into many of his paintings.
Storni once referred to men as
el enemigo, "the enemy." Much of Storni's work focuses on what she sees as the repression of women by men. This often takes the form of personal insults directed at men in general. For example, in "Tú me quieres blanca" (You want me white), she wrote,
Dios te lo perdone, "May God forgive you," even though the poem is about male hypocrisy regarding the chastity of women.
Work
- 1916 La inquietud del rosal ("The Restlessness of the Rose")
- 1918 El dulce daño ("Sweet injury")
- 1919 Irremediablemente ("Irremediably")
- 1920 Languidez ("Languidness")
- 1925 Ocre ("Ochre")
- 1926 Poemas de amor ("Love poems")
- 1927 El amo del mundo: comedia en tres actos - play ("Master of the world: a comedy in three acts")
- 1932 Dos farsas pirotécnicas - play ("Two pyrotechnic farces")
- 1934 Mundo de siete pozos ("World of seven wells")
- 1938 Mascarilla y trébol ("Mask and trefoil")
Post mortem:
- 1938 Antología poética ("Poetic anthology")
- 1968 Poesías completas ("Complete poetical works")
- 1998 Nosotras y la piel: selección de ensayos ("We (women) and the skin: selected essays")
External links